12 Quotes by Joan Didion about thinking


  • Author Joan Didion
  • Quote

    Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily.

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  • Author Joan Didion
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    Of course, you always think about how it will be read. I always aim for a reading in one sitting.

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  • Author Joan Didion
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    You think you have some stable talent which will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will.

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  • Author Joan Didion
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    I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation to some people.

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  • Author Joan Didion
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    Some of us who live in arid parts of the world think about water with a reverence others might find excessive.

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  • Author Joan Didion
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    I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good parents, they ought to think again.

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  • Author Joan Didion
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    The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participating in it. Anyone can "drive" on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do, hesitating here and resisting there, losing the rhythm of the lane change, thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participation requires total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.

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  • Author Joan Didion
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    Novels are almost like music or poetry - they just come to me in simple sentences, whereas I think my pieces get more and more complex ever since I've started using a computer.

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